Dark Souls II - News Roundup

September 20th, 2013, 06:38

The following news-bit for Dark Souls II is going to be lengthy. I'm going to try and keep it short so lets get started.

Up first Namco Bandai announces a release date for the console editions of Dark Souls II saying the ARPG sequel will be released on March 11, 2014. The PC release will come later with no date set yet. You can find a new trailer here to go with this news.

Thanks to Namco Bandai, we have the opportunity to publish a Dark Souls 2 interview. Our questions were kindly answered by Yui Tanimura at From Software, who’s currently working on Dark Souls 2 as Director. Please enjoy!

And for last I have five new previews released today. I'm just going to list the sites to save time and space.

Originally Posted by JDR13
This serves as a reminder that I really need to get around to finishing Dark Souls.

A friend of mine gave me Demon's Souls to lend whilst my brother had loaned me his PS3 for a while. The unfortunate thing is my brother decided to take his PS3 back a couple of days later and so the game sits unplayed and glints with a taunting menace at me. And so I've never felt so tempted to buy a PS3…

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
A friend of mine gave me Demon's Souls to lend whilst my brother had loaned me his PS3 for a while. The unfortunate thing is my brother decided to take his PS3 back a couple of days later and so the game sits unplayed and glints with a taunting menace at me. And so I've never felt so tempted to buy a PS3…

Get one. The PS3 is still a worthwhile system imo, especially since the PS4 will not be backwards compatible.

From can make it as hard and as wicked as they want, they just need to find some creative way to implement consequences instead of hiking back to the boss for several minutes. I swear I spent 10% or more of the game time being punished with boredom for losing to a boss. This only encourages less experimentation and more reading faqs and wikis.

They have brilliant artists and level designers, but gameplay designers who are convinced that frustration is where the entertainment is. The punishment mechanic they use is as old arcade games, and lacks the vision of the rest of the game. It reminds me of the first Mario where you feared missing a jump or dying because it meant you wasted a lot of time and will have to spend huge chunks of time redoing content.

Getting invaded when hollow is just a shit idea. Surely remaining hollow and losing hit points by continuously dying is punishment enough. This will make you want to go into human form which means then you can be invaded. This decision is overkill.

Originally Posted by Ryder
Getting invaded when hollow is just a shit idea. Surely remaining hollow and losing hit points by continuously dying is punishment enough. This will make you want to go into human form which means then you can be invaded. This decision is overkill.

I like getting invaded while hollow, but hate the losing hitpoints for dying repeatedly. It's like…. The good player gets it easy but the player who couldn't do it with full hitpoints has to do a harder version?

Also, adding more limitations to co-op play only makes it worse as a co-op game, which it very much is supposed to be. I think everyone in the world was hoping for unlimited co-op.

And they talk about rating messages again to get some heal, but this sort of design is like they haven't been playing dark souls at all and noticed no one ever rates messages. Surely just reading them is enough? Even if you got a reward when your message is loaded into another players game since its added content enriching the world that the player chose to bypass.

This is the first time I don't like things I'm reading. I have the same doubts about degenerating hit points, which only seems to penalize players who are not that skillful or patient. It is a controversial decision to say the least.

The timed summons are also strange. We did enjoy goofing around with friends, and often you gotta hop out for something and be AFK a little, now it's not possible. You can't take your time exploring with friends, which was great. It seems coop will only be viable for PvP and boss-kills. Odd.

I also wonder how the complete reversal of Hollow-Human state benefits/features will come down in lore, because when it comes to Dark Souls, game mechanics and lore are intertwined quite well.

Originally Posted by Soulbane
The timed summons are also strange. We did enjoy goofing around with friends, and often you gotta hop out for something and be AFK a little, now it's not possible. You can't take your time exploring with friends, which was great. It seems coop will only be viable for PvP and boss-kills. Odd.

I thought the player you summoned in Dark Souls was completely random.